A common type of dust collector for capturing dusts at point sources in manufacturing facilities is comprised of fabric bags mounted in a container or cabinet. The bags are suspended from a mounting plate with their open ends facing upwardly and their closed ends hanging freely downwardly. A blower draws particulate laden gas into the region around the lower ends of the bags, thence through their porous walls, and upwardly out of the top end to a plenum and discharge point.
Fine particulates become trapped on and become stuck to the exterior of the bags and have to be periodically removed to maintain air flow through the collector. Commonly, the lower ends of filter bags are shaken; the dust falls to the bottom of the cabinet from which it is by and by removed. In smaller dust collectors, shaking is carried out by manually moving a lever which in one way or another shakes the bags. However, if shaking to remove dust is not done sufficiently often, or with sufficient vigor, the bags remain laden with dust, and their flow capacity, and thus the effectiveness of the whole system, will be less than it ought to be.
Thus for convenience or automation, powered mechanisms may be employed to carry out the shaking of the bags. Often, automated shaking seeks to simuluate manual motion, i.e., a motor simply simulates the action of a person. For instance, a linear motor has been applied to the manual shaking lever.
A problem with any particular shaking mode is that it may not be sufficiently effective in removing all particulate, and thus re-optimizing flow. For instance, only a portion of the bag may be effectively cleaned. Another problem is that the automated shaking mechanism may be unduly complex and thus unreliable or costly. Thus, there is a need for simple and effective automated dust removal method and apparatus, and for one that can be readily applied to collectors in substitution of a manual shaker.